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Coin Theory of money

31/08/18 11:56

Toward a theory of MoneeYou and your friends are members of an alien species that is fascinated by a dead planet known as E-rth and in particular with the extinct species called Huemon. In particular, you are interested in understanding a peculiar aspect of Huemon society, known as monee. It is thought by many that everything in the Huemon society is somehow made of monee. One of the problems that you face in understanding monee is your vision, which detects light only in the short wave radio range. As a result of this, you and members of your species can only resolve, that is, see, objects that are larger than about 7 cm in size. Therefore, while many of you suspect that there is fine structure to monee, no one has been able to discern what that structure is.Among the things known about monee are:

Collections of monee behave as a dense liquid. That is, when poured into a container they have a defined volume, but adopt the shape of the container.

When poured, monee makes a characteristic "jingling" sound.

You are the planets leading expert in monee (since scientists are revered on your planet, that makes you kind of a big deal…kind of like basketball players are here). You have attained the status for two main reasons. First you have found a way to purify different types of monee based upon their optical properties. You have, to date, isolated three distinct types: type "A," is extremely shiny; type "B" is somewhat dull in appearance but similar in color to A; type "C" has two forms, a shiny one and a dull one, but both are darker in color than either A or B. The second reason for your success, is that you have discovered a Huemon device known as the "Kandimusheen." When specific combinations of monee are put into the Kandimusheen, various tasty treats come out (this is part of why your species thinks that everything on E-arth is made of monee). You have combined these two advantages to determine that specific combinations of each form of monee results specific treats.Since you cannot handle money directly, you have a robot to carry out your experiments. In a typical experiment, you begin with a known mass of each type of monee in each of three cups. The robot then takes monee from each of two cups and combines them with the help of the Kandimusheen, yielding a particular substance. After that, you can determine how much of each type of money is used by determining mass remaining in each cup.The results of typical experiments are shown below:

Experiment

Mass of "A" used

Mass of "B" used

Mass of "C" used

Yield

1

0g

5.0g

3.0g

peessogum

2

0g

10.0g

6.0g

2 peesogum

3

2.5g

5.0g

0

chalklatkiss

4

5.0g

10.0g

0g

2 chalklatkiss

5

5.0g

5.0g

0g

Kookie

6

10g

10.0g

0g

2 Kookie

7**

5.0g

5.0g

0g

chalklatkiss AND 2.5g of A left over

The key observations you make are:

Your task is to come up with a detailed theory of monee, and explain to me, an amiable but somewhat dim King, as much as you can about how monee works.John Dalton 1766-1844John Dalton lived in England, on planet Earth, where scientists are not revered nearly enough. Among nerds like myself, Dalton is famous for many things. He also trained a graduate student who went on to become famous, named James Prescott Joule, who distinguished himself working on energy. Dalton worked on matter, and is perhaps best known for his Atomic Theory of Matter.Dalton's notebooks show that he based it on data and observations such as this:This last set of observations led Dalton to what's known as: "the law of multiple proportions." the key observation here, is that you had to add exactly twice as much oxygen. As was the case for the two different types of money we were discussing, the best way to explain this is if there is a particle of a definite mass. Just as we had to combine two dimes with a nickel to get $.25, or one dime with a nickel to get $.15, but could not add some fraction of the dime to get an intermediate amount, Dalton proposed you had to add a whole atom of oxygen to a compound made of a definite number of each type of atom. In the example of the two gases, the deadly one is carbon monoxide, which has one carbon atom paired with one oxygen atom; whereas the less deadly version is carbon dioxide, which has two oxygen atoms paired with a single carbon atom.From this, Dalton came to very similar explanations as you did for monee.So, if we assume the deadly gas is one carbon atom and one oxygen atom, carbon monoxide, then the non deadly has one carbon atom and two oxygens (accounting for the mass of oxygen doubling). This would be carbon dioxide.The ratio of the masses of Carbon to Oxygen is 3:4. Hydrogen was found to be the lightest (it is given the weight of one Dalton), then oxygen is 16 times that mass, and therefore oxygen must be 16 daltons, and Carbon must be 12 (to maintain the 3:4 with Oxygen). Notice, you don't know the actual mass in grams. But, you know the ratios.